Ftrain, by Paul Ford

After the setback on Friday I recovered well. I didn't get most of my planned work done--interesting to have written it down, so that I can see how unrealistic my goals were. But unrealistic goals are my business. Scanning the archive, writing a novel, quitting smoking, and now, this, the flensing.

I don't want to be ashamed about the spare rib tips. I only needed to shovel some meat into my meathole, in the same way I sometimes need to listen to Steve Winwood songs. Sometimes terrible things must be done in order to feel alive. In context of the month, instead of the day, it's not a particularly significant event.

When we were together, tips, it was beautiful. Yes, I have regrets. But I also have my memories.

Pleasures have consequences, no matter how much of my brain I apply to making the opposite be true. This is a sort of ongoing revelation; it's obvious to most ten-year-olds but it's a lesson I never managed to learn. I could see it most recently in my capitulation before the encroaching army of green popsicles--they made me happy at lunch, and I had the calories, so why not have two more after dinner? But what grown man needs three popscicles in a day, or tears through a box of them in two days? This man, the man who loves green popsicles.

Anyway, calories subvert the story I'm telling here. Which is good. They won't lie, no matter what I might write. Go ahead, pretend you're smart; you're not smarter than a bucket of fried meat.

It was easier to quit smoking. There is exactly one number of cigarettes to smoke, daily, if you want to achieve better health: zero. Very easy to measure failure or success. Whereas eating is a complicated polynomial. So many numbers one atop the other. BP 129/64.